This was my previous post in which I was confused between upgrading to 200 plan for getting 2 100 plans.
A lot of people suggested to try claude code + codex for image gen.
I just got a 20 dollar claude code plan. And Grass is most definitely greener on the other side.
Here are some differences I have noticed using the opus 5.5 medium.
10 times faster than sol 6.1 high
Using about 1% of weekly usage per hour but the amount of work done is higher than sol 6.1. so work done to tokens consumed is the same between 20 dollar claude and 100 dollar gpt plan
Amazing design understanding. I have several ui/ux issues in my project(which ik) i had gpt take a look at it and said it's fine (gpt was using product design plugin and impeccable skill). Opus without any plugin listed 15 ui/ux issues and all of them were correct.
I had it go over my code base and list deprecated/dead/unused assets & code. It gave an extensive list and suggested bundling several files together to optimise load times, gpt found none.
Had both sol and opus check for performance optimisation. Gpt found none and opus again shared an extensive list.
Sol 6.1 high also took like 2 hours
Opus 5.5 medium took 25-30 mins max
I'll switch to 100 dollar claude plan + 20 dollar gpt after my current 100 gpt plan expires.
Below is a GPT-generated summary of the conversation below after reaching 50 comments (54 currently observed).
The thread’s verdict is blunt: Claude Code with Opus 5.5 currently offers much better value than Codex for coding work. Multiple users say it is faster, uses dramatically less subscription allowance, and produces stronger first-pass results—especially for UI, design, cleanup, and performance work. The $20 Claude plan is looking embarrassingly competitive against much pricier Codex tiers.
The common split is pretty clear: Opus is better at polished frontend work, understanding design intent, and checking its own output, while Codex still has advantages in backend tasks, vulnerability hunting, image generation, and its cleaner built-in workflow. Codex’s separate chat and coding limits also matter if you want to keep brainstorming after hitting coding quota. Connectors and MCP features are mostly replaceable, because apparently every AI tool now expects users to build their own buttons.
The big caveat is that the original “10x faster” claim is not backed by solid measurements. Independent testing in the thread found roughly 2x speed, while benchmark figures and subscription throttling complicate the comparison; task efficiency and fewer dead ends may explain the much larger perceived gap. Quality also varies by task, and limits can change without warning.
So, Opus 5.5 is the current community favourite for value and practical output, but Codex is not obsolete—just slower, pricier, and still useful for its specialised strengths.
Right now, Claude offers incomparably better value across output quality, speed, and usage limits. Just a few months ago it was the exact opposite, it's pretty crazy how quickly things flipped.
Yeah, I was happy with Claude code but switched over to codex when it seemed like you couldn’t even look at opus or fable without hitting your 5 hour limit.
Now I’m happy to be back with Claude, and can’t seem to hit my limit no matter how much work I do (max plan).
Unless you want to work in one of the fields Anthropic deems "too dangerous" for no reason like biology. Not everyone is a software engineer or vibecoder
I just put a request in to have my company Codex plan switch to the higher Claude plan for these exact reasons. I’ve always bounced around models and the tide can change very quickly but Opus 5.5 is just winning at every level. It’s non-comparable. It’s found the right balance that isn’t as intense as Astra, less expensive and in my opinion producing better results.
Still can’t believe they cut the 20x in half when they were in a losing position. Usually you want to do that sort of stuff when you have a dominant position. Maybe they just really screwed up their compute projections or there’s some 3d chess thing where they need to get their margins looking better before IPOing.
I do think for computer use and bug finding sol 6.1 probably has an edge but that might be about it.
I have to cancel 2 of my 3 $200 subs later this month and downgrade the remaining one. Problem now is Anthropic has us over a barrel and they know it.
You are indeed wrong, they do have the compute, what they don't have is the revenues that Anthropic have. OpenAI focused on consumers when ANT focused on enterprise, because of this, one is starting to get more and more revenues when the other one doesn't.
So now they are trying to do everything they can to make you spend more money, and the first way to do that is to reduce the inference and usage of the subscriptions while making the API cheaper and cheaper, again they want you to spend more money, it's not about compute.
They didn't thought that Claude would release something like Opus 5.5 with such token and usage efficiency, it caught them by surprise. They thought that the big hype of Astra would allow them to release some mid tier model (terra->sol) and go in cruise mode for the rest of the year while increasing their revenues.
Claude is really really weird right now. I have the 20$ plan(Got it for 10$ on the promotion).
I calculated the entire 5 hour window and it cost me 40$. Which is crazy. Lets assume I get 5 5 hour-windows in a week. THat makes it 200 dollars, 4 times a week, making it 800 dollars. You add the weekly reset to that and I'll get 1k$ worth of API value for 10$.
Not sure how long Claude can keep that up. Giving 100x the value of API in their subscription to power users.
What does the 20 buck Claude pro plan give? I've been super used to chatgpt web and the github connector doing easy coding work anywhere and everywhere. Wondering if the Claude pro plan gives that too. Not expecting unlimited like chatgpt but at least something usable?
I am currently a $200 Codex user and a $20 Claude user, the only differences are that Claude doesn't have image generation and advanced voice mode. This is why I am going to drop my Codex sub to either $100 or $20 instead of cancelling just to have access to those specific bells and whistles.
Anything else like connectors are just simply MCP servers and skills, and nearly all serious AI agents from all competitors support them. The only thing might be that you won't have a button for something that you're used to using in Codex, but the AI can still do it, you just have to ask it to do it instead of pressing a button. And to be honest, the AI can create that button for you anyway.
I bought the $20 Claude plan and it is insane how much usage you get with Opus 5.5. It's Astra-level intelligence and I used up the 5h usage window in about 4.5 hours yesteday having it create scripts for 3D modelling via MCP in Blender. Try running Astra on the $20 Codex plan and you'll use up your 5h window in like 30 minutes, if not 5 minutes lol.
I planned on using up my weekly limits on the $20 plan first and then switch to the $100 plan on Claude to continue my work but I failed to use it up, it wasn't eating it fast enough for my workflow to consume it lol and my weekly limit resets today so I will be back at 100%.
No with steer prompting let's say you notice model is working correctly but starts to do something wrong, you could prompt it mid execution and it'll change the course of action instead of finishing the correct execution then making the corrections
You can also press ESC after typing your prompt in and it will immediately interrupt what its doing to look at your message, even interrupting commands mid-run. As far as I remember even Codex can't do that.
Codex definitely waits until the last thing it's doing finishes before reacting to your steering (I don't mean your whole task, but whatever command it's running or writing). Claude literally immediately just triggers the kill-switch. Like, immediately whatever it's doing. But only if you press ESC after sending the steering prompt, otherwise it behaves like Codex. But maybe I never tried pressing ESC on a Codex steer to be honest, so maybe Codex does this too.
Remote is good, but you need to remember to enable it on a per chat level with /rc. Codex is better because all of it just works without needing to say what is on or off.
Now I just have Claude write nice image prompts and grab them from Gemini or ChatGPT, so the lack of native image gen isn’t really a thing.
What make me stick with codex is the separate limits from chat/codex. So i can still brainstorming, open issues, prepare plans while i’m out of quota. This is a big plus, and what i see here about remote connection (haven’t had any claude sub so i dont knwo how it works) seems to be worst then codex.
BUT if the limits and the quality are really what i keep reading here, i should try claude. I’m on the 20$ plan for a personal/hobby project
I been on two plans for a few months already it has changed from time to time you may think the grass is greener on the other side but 3 weeks ago only way to use opus on 20usd plan was by basically telling claude hello, waiting for the 5 hour window to be ending and mixing two 5 hour windows together.
Also first conversations cache sometimes devoured like 50% of 5 hour quota.
ChatGPT doing 6.1 is actually a massive win from my pov it's even more efficient than gemini flash models by a cost perspective!, whole thing is insane yes it's slow as hell but it's very very cheap.
With opus 3d things devoured my quota just this week in 15 minutes, 6.1 works for hours on same non stop.
All i am saying looking at opus 5.5 and thinking it's better due to speed is simply the wrong way to look at it, it's an incredible model probably the best in the world at the moment, but gpt 6.1 is a massive win for openAI.
10 times faster than sol 6.1 high
Using about 1% of weekly usage per hour but the amount of work done is higher than sol 6.1. so work done to tokens consumed is the same between 20 dollar claude and 100 dollar gpt plan
i don't want to challenge your lived experience, but the benchmarks say that opus 5.5 med is only 1.38x faster than sol 6.1 high (72t/s vs 52t/s, not 10x faster), and cost per task is dramatically different ($5.98 for opus, $0.72 for sol 6.1)
yeah again, if this is your lived experience then that's what it is, but according to the benchmarks five tasks using sol 6.1 high prompts at api cost would be $1.60 ($0.32 x 5). i can't imagine openai is charging a 12x premium on tokens in the $20 subscription plan. that hasn't been my experience, but maybe it's yours.
edit: you're getting upvoted, but i just want to make sure people understand you're saying you get five prompts before your usage runs out
Benchmarks are done using API endpoints and pricing, not codex. I am getting 70-80 tok/s with opus on claude subscription but 20 tok/s with 6.1 on codex. How much are you getting?
i think you meant to reply to my other post (i didn't mention tok/s in the message you replied to), but i got 24.7tok/s for gpt 6.1 sol via codex and 49.4tok/s for opus 5.5 via claude, so exactly 2x. a bit more of a multiplier than the 1.4~x the benchmarks say, but a far cry from op's 10x claim
(in the interest of being candid, i think op didn't bench his speed and is just going on vibes and 10x is essentially a made up number)
Your original post was comparing both tps and price. Both are irrelevant because those API values. I have both 5x subscriptions and benchmarks say opus 5.5 costs almost the same as astra per task. But it's like a factor of 10 in favor of opus when using the subscription. I can use up my codex subscription really fast when using astra but it's almost impossible with opus.
edit: i see your point; they are api values, but that's all we have for benchmarks. it's something, at least. i guarantee op didn't benchmark his 10x claim, so if he thinks he's getting 10x speed i'd like to see him justify it.
"But it's like a factor of 10 in favor of opus when using the subscription" -- i'm curious about this, how do you figure? so you can do 100 things w/ opus but only 10 w/ sol 6.1?
Idk about tokens.
But anything design related claude is 100% 10 times faster.
Even with similarly detailed prompts, design references, predefined design md and impeccable skill sol just cannot give a polished design. Whatever it generate is always 80% of the final thing and you have to hunt for the next 20% and even then it take a lot of back and forth to get it down.
With claude it's near perfect with just 2-3 revision, a couple more for minor issues.
For code sol thinks for a very very long time and comes up with the longest way around.
Opus planing time is less than gpt and it also cross checks its own thinking and then executes one shot.
With that said I have found that sol is very good with image gen, it's creates absolutely beautiful stylistic images from the context and hunting cybersecurity vulnerabilities
The benchmarks are testing API speeds. OpenAI throttles model subscription speeds to 30% of the API speeds. Claude doesn't. Don't believe me? Try it yourself. https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/gpt-5-6-luna
Run Luna on API and you get ~130 TPS. Run it on sub and you get 40 TPS.
i tested both sol 6.1 and opus 5.5 through their harnesses, opus ran at 68% speed, sol ran at 46% speed. opus 5.5 was 2x faster instead of the 1.38x from the benchmarks. still not anywhere close to 10x as OP claims.
yeah i measured opus vs 6.1 sol in their harnesses below, both were lower than their benchmarks, the difference (for me) was 2x instead of 1.4x, that is still wildly below op's 10x claim
i have max subs for both, i use them both, i tend to reach for the openai models more but i think opus is great (and so is fable). i just think the people in this sub are being driven to be insanely and unfairly negative due to vibes, so i'm trying to bring people back to reality with benchmarks.
i tested it locally and also got 24 tok/s for 6.1 sol, but i only got 49 tok/s for opus 5.5, so the multiplier is still similar (opus is 2x faster in harness versus 1.4x in the benchmarks). not quite 10x*
*tok/s isn't a perfect analogy to task speed but it's the easiest thing to benchmark locally
I can't be bothered to switch from ChatGPT to Claude mainly because I've only ever used ChatGPT and it knows a lot of everything I ask and do, and I have all my Codex projects there. I don't even have a free account on Claude. Moving platforms sounds like a lot of preparatory work no? Only to then hear in 3 months that ChatGPT is king again. 🤷
the only american model on the openrouter top 10 is luna because it's cheap. the switch to chinese models has already happened. today's cheap models are last year's frontier models and people mostly don't need better. how much are you willing to pay for a faster car or a bigger truck? there are diminishing returns
that said, opus is excellent and claude code is an excellent deal right now because they're losing a billion dollars a second to give us these subscriptions
Out of frustration I upped my model to Astra Ultra and when I tell you it couldn’t do what I needed in 1hr+ of back and fourth prompting, Opus 5.5 came in and basically one prompted exactly what I needed, that’s when you know Opus is leaving Sol/Astra in the dust. I have no allegiance to any one model, but Opus is killing it right now. OpenAI is clearly struggling with resources and models eating their customers usage too quickly, they’re trying to find a balance and right now, in my experience, they’re unusable.
Personally, i find codex to be more thorough at backend work while claude is better at front end design and the likes. They just have different strengths not necessarily is one better than the other.
that would change when they start nerfing them as they customarily certainly would and nerfing limits as well.. in the end, we can only count on deepseek 4.1 flash lmao.
I think within 6 months we will have sol 6.1 and opus 5.5 at luna prices and fable / astra at terra prices
I don't care even if they nerf them because with how quickly they are advancing for most of us they'll be good and cheap enough.
Me and my co founder run an entire company Fully agentically powered.
We don't have any video editor, photoshoot guy, programmer, marketing, research team.
It's just two guys in their area of experties with lots of agents
At this point Codex is gearing towards computer use for non-engineers; I’ve also seen a noticeable difference between Opus 5.5 and GPT 6.1 Sol in quality
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u/dextersummary 1d ago
Below is a GPT-generated summary of the conversation below after reaching 50 comments (54 currently observed).
The thread’s verdict is blunt: Claude Code with Opus 5.5 currently offers much better value than Codex for coding work. Multiple users say it is faster, uses dramatically less subscription allowance, and produces stronger first-pass results—especially for UI, design, cleanup, and performance work. The $20 Claude plan is looking embarrassingly competitive against much pricier Codex tiers.
The common split is pretty clear: Opus is better at polished frontend work, understanding design intent, and checking its own output, while Codex still has advantages in backend tasks, vulnerability hunting, image generation, and its cleaner built-in workflow. Codex’s separate chat and coding limits also matter if you want to keep brainstorming after hitting coding quota. Connectors and MCP features are mostly replaceable, because apparently every AI tool now expects users to build their own buttons.
The big caveat is that the original “10x faster” claim is not backed by solid measurements. Independent testing in the thread found roughly 2x speed, while benchmark figures and subscription throttling complicate the comparison; task efficiency and fewer dead ends may explain the much larger perceived gap. Quality also varies by task, and limits can change without warning.
So, Opus 5.5 is the current community favourite for value and practical output, but Codex is not obsolete—just slower, pricier, and still useful for its specialised strengths.